The characters in 'Marketplace 76' experience more calamities in one year that most people in their whole lifetime. Needcompany’s picture of social upheaval in 2012 reduces you to silence. Yet it also contains a glimmer of hope. The absurd developments Jan Lauwers subjects a peaceful village to are almost indescribable. Firstly a gas explosion mows down the village’s children, then on the day of the commemoration one of the surviving children jumps out of a window. Shortly afterwards a perverse plumber abducts a girl, in response to which the mother takes her own life. Vengeance follows. Yet Lauwers’ stories are not so far-fetched. You recognise the Marc Dutrouxs and the Wolfgang Priklopils of this world. In their turn, the men in their orange street-cleaners’ outfits, who fall from the sky, present the all too familiar picture of the foreigners who are here condemned to accepting third-rate jobs. But it is precisely these men who turn out to be some sort of saviour. And saviours are much needed. The small community Jan Lauwers here outlines in his role as narrator has been pushed to the edge of the abyss by all the calamities it has suffered. People don’t even want to make love any more. The fountain on the square is dry, both literally and figuratively. A veiled atonement – the plumber is drowned in the fountain while the commissioner looks away – resolves nothing. Which is why the plumber’s wife – the Asian Kim-Ho – is also put into isolation. At this point the story takes a different turn. Just as in Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, all the men of the village turn to her to satisfy their lusts. But unlike Von Trier’s film, it does not end in manslaughter. Kim-Ho enjoys her role as a whore. In the end, the child she is bearing even saves the village. The fountain flows once again. 'Marketplace 76' is thus a portrait of our absurd world, painted in the most intense colours. The social consensus of the good old days is long gone. All that remains is struggle. As is their custom, the Needcompany performers do not tell this story in a single straight line. They occasionally forget the part they are playing to comment on their character. The group regularly burst into song and dance, but they prefer good old messing around. The stage sometimes looks like a real tip. But it all turns out right after the child is born. In an excellent article in the programme, Erwin Jans explains why. In his view, this play ends as an advance sign of a matriarchal order that goes beyond the logic of exclusion and exploitation. This explanation is very convincing, except for one thing: Jans calls Lauwers’ method ‘Brechtian’. But in fact his ‘epic theatre’ – as the production is proclaimed to be – draws more on that scorned and forgotten genre called ‘melodrama’. Melodrama had its heyday in Paris around 1800. Insane, bloody plot twists involving the most extreme characters succeeded one another rapidly in song and dance. A narrator invariably provided a commentary and explained the moral. In this way the Parisians coped with the terror of the revolution, which was still fresh in their memories. Marketplace 76 drives out our demons using exactly the same means. Although we have not had any revolutions here recently, to Lauwers it is quite obvious that our world is as upside down as it was then. The only difference is that his moral is more subtle and subversive. In the end the viewer has to draw his own conclusions. That is the one thing that is familiar from Brecht.